Foxton Proposed Conservation Areas

FOXTON PROPOSED CONSERVATION AREAS

Layout of Document:

1.0INTRODUCTION

2.0WHAT ARE CONSERVATION AREAS?

3.0OVERVIEW OF THE AREA

4.0A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE

5.0GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE SETTING

6.0ARCHAEOLOGY

7.0KEY CHARACTERISTICS

8.0ENHANCEMENTS

9.0STREETSCAPE ANALYSIS:

9.1SHEPETH ROAD

9.2THE GREEN

9.3CAXTON LANE AND MALTING LANE

9.4HIGH STREET

9.5STATION ROAD

9.6FOWLMERE ROAD

9.7MORTIMERS LANE

10.0STREETSCAPE ANALYSISFOXTON STATION

11.0ASSETS OF COMMUNITY VALUE

12.0POLICIES TO PRESERVE THE CHARACTER OF THE AREA

APPENDIX A: RELEVANT PLANNING POLICIES

APPENDIX B: MAP OF CURRENT AND PROPOSED MAIN CONSERVATION AREA

APPENDIX C: MAP OF PROPOSED STATION CONSERVATION AREA

1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 The current Foxton Conservation Area was designated in 1972.This document aims toexpand that area and to add a new area around the railway station.

1.2 This document has been prepared by the Foxton Village History group in accordance with action point 1.2 in the 2011 Foxton Parish Plan. Action point 1.2 states “Encourage setting up of group to liaise with PC and SCDC in expansion of conservation area. Establish a residents group to pursue expansion of the designated conservation area”

1.3 Foxton aims to comply with South Cambridgeshire DistrictCouncil’s duty to ‘draw up and publish proposals for the preservation and enhancement’ of areasof the village as required by the Planning (Listed Buildingsand Conservation Areas) Act 1990 and thecommitment made by policy EN29 in the adoptedLocal Plan.

1.4 The aim of this draft proposal is to inform Foxton Parish Council of the views of the village’s history group. It provides the basis for commissioning a planning consultant and for consulting the villagers of Foxton. The end result is a document which will become a supplementary part of the local planning process.

2.0 WHAT ARE CONSERVATION AREAS?

2.1 Conservation Areas are defined as ‘areas of special architectural or historic interest, the character or appearance of which it is desirable to preserve or enhance’.

2.2 When a Conservation Area has been designated, it increases the council’s powers, with planning applications judged by their impact on the character and appearance of the area. Greatercontrols over the demolition of buildings and structures are imposed whilst the rights thatowners have to do works to their propertieswithout the prior need to obtain planning permission (known as ‘permitted developmentrights’) are reduced or may be taken away. Strictercontrols are also exercised over the design ofnew buildings, and owners must give the councilsix weeks’ notice of their intention to carry outworks to trees. Planning applications affecting aConservation Area must be advertised on site and in the local press to give people the opportunity tocomment.

2.3 We have also identified assets of community value to be nominated for inclusion in the list in accordance with the requirements of the Localism Act 2011

3.0 OVERVIEW OF THE AREA

3.1 Foxton is a small self-contained village situated off the A10 between Royston and Cambridge. It has a strong and active community and is well endowed with community facilities and transport links.

3.2 The High Street running through the centre of the village is of great importance to the visual qualities and well-being of the community. It is narrow with dangerous bends. It suffers from acute congestion at times particularly in the vicinity of the shop, pub and Church, this area being at the heart of this small community.

3.3 Ideally we would like further restrictions on large vehicles and the speed of all vehicles along the High Street.

3.4 Due to the sensitive nature of existing development and the feeling that the High Street is at capacity, Foxton is not well suited to any more than minor infill development.

3.5 Its character and the quality of life of its residents would be threatened if not destroyed by major development.

3.6 Our main proposal is to extend the present conservation area to include the whole of the High Street and parts of several adjoining roads where the historic setting would be impacted by inappropriate development.

3.7 We also propose the inclusion of historic buildings around Foxton railway station.

4.0 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE VILLAGE

4.1 Foxton’s history over the last two thousand years was unravelled in great detail in the 1960s by Rowland Parker, and is the subject of hisbest-sellingbook “The Common Stream”, which was published in 1975 after thirteen years of research. The old village is a linear settlement along the old brook which has now gone, but is replaced by the High Street. At the heart of the village lie the Church and The Bury, where the manor court was once held.

4.2 The British Village and Roman settlement were situated along the original brook which ran from Heydon to Fowlmere then on to join the River Rhee. At some stage, probably during the Anglo Saxon period, the Brook is believed to have been dug by local people to create a water course between the stream between Fowlmere and Shepreth, and Hoffers Brook in Harston. This may have been for defensive reasons, but people gradually moved to the land alongside it.

4.3 The Abbess of Chatteris founded the Benedictine nunnery at Chatteris between AD 970 and AD 980, and endowed it with land situated in South Cambridgeshire including 640 acres in Foxton, which were to remain in its possession for the next five hundred and fifty years. The Abbess not only had the revenue from the land but also the judicial powers to hold a court and collect fines.

4.4 The Doomsday Book (1086) mentions both the Abbess of Chatteris and Geoffrey de Mandeville as land holders. It also mentions twenty-one villeins, twenty-one bordars, two watchmen and one slave, giving a total of forty five men. Allowing for women and children would give a population of about two hundred which is the average estimated village population for that time.

4.5 The documentary evidence between 1086 and 1286 reflect only the lords and their manors and the transference of land. In about 1140 the first chalk built church was paid for by the Bancs family, and they also paid about a hundred years later for it to be enlarged when the nave of the earlier church became the chancel of the new one. The surviving court records give a detailed insight into the life of the medieval village.

4.6 Although there is no direct evidence that the Plague - later called the Black Death - of 1349 came to Foxton, the thriving community struggled over the next two hundred years. The population of Foxton in 1327 was at least 320 named people. The next date where an approximate head count is possible is 1492 when the population was less than 150. Similar evidence from the manors suggests that about two-thirds of the population died from the plague in 1349 and the effects of that would be a long period of recovery.

4.7 Recovery came during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. New names appear in the village from about 1548, so that by 1603 more than forty new families had come to the village. Between 1550 and 1620 the village was completely rebuilt, with more than 50 houses being erected. Approximately twenty of those houses are still standing in the current village. The historian John Layer comments in 1622 that Foxton ‘containeth about sixty families’.

4.8 As Oliver Cromwell had family ties with Foxton, Civil War involvement was on the side of the Parliamentarians. The disappearance of certain men from the records just after 1641 and the fact that some of Cromwell’s men were billeted in a house on the eastern side of the village in 1645 surely confirm this.

4.9 The Enclosure award and map of 1830 for Foxton show who owned what and where it was located. Many of the historic fields had disappeared, the parish boundaries were defined in detail, the roads were defined and delineated, and seventeen out of twenty ancient lanes and paths vanished. The Parish contained 1726 acres, of which 34 acres were roads, drains and brooks. The Bendysh family was awarded 800 acres and the Hurrell family 400 acres. The cost of implementing the Parliamentary Bill for the Enclosure of the Common Fields of Foxton was just over £3000.

4.10 Nineteenth century Foxton began to change and develop. In 1828 Foxton House was built. The railway arrived in Foxton in 1848. Other new buildings were Foxton Hall, two farms, a pub and three houses near the station, a school, the chapel, a new vicarage and several houses rebuilt on old sites. The church was almost completely restored between 1876 and 1881.

4.11 The opening of The University Tutorial Press in 1908 by William Briggs provided alternative employment to agricultural work, as did the Barrington Cement works from 1914. The Tutorial Press was the first industrial unit in the village, and with its housing for employees was a model development for that time.

4.12 Later twentieth century developments include Hillfield, Station Road, West Hill Road in 1965, and St. Laurence Road, Illingworth Way and Rowlands Close in the 1970s. A new School and Village Hall complex was opened in Hardman Road in 2002.

4.13 The current population is approximately 1,280 and there are approximately 470 houses.

5.0 GEOLOGY AND LANDSCAPE SETTING

The parish of Foxton is bounded on the west by Shepreth Brook, on the north by the river Cam or Rhee, on the east by Hoffers Brook and in the south by the old Turnpike road from Fowlmere to Cambridge. The village of Foxton lies on a geological boundary running along the High Street in front of the church which extends west towards Foxton House before turning towards Fowlmere near Foxton Brook. To the east the boundary follows Mortimers Lane before running parallel to Hoffers Brook. The boundary line bedrock is a narrow band of Totternhoe Stone of the Lower Chalk formation, to the south of that band the bedrock is of Melbourn Rock chalk, excepting Chalk Hill and West Hill which comprise Holywell Nodular Chalk. To the north the bedrock is ZigZag Chalk with superficial River Terrace Deposits of sand and gravel. The village curls around the north side of the two hills at about 16 to 20 m OD except where the Fowlmere Road rises further up the side of Chalk Hill as it leaves the village to the south. The hills are wooded and rise to almost 34 m OD to provide a particularly attractive visual focus from the village.

6.0 ARCHAEOLOGY

The two brooks, Shepreth and Hoffers, were the focus of early occupation of the parish. A double ring ditch barrow, probably Bronze Age, lies on the slope of West Hill with another ring ditch further to the south. Palaeolithic and Neolithic axes have been found to the south west of the village at West Hill. Crop marks are extensive near the streams particularly west of the station between the road and the railway where significant prehistoric and Roman remains were discovered during a pipeline excavation in 1994. This is very close to the site of a Roman villa explored by Parker in the 1970s.

Substantial Iron Age and Roman remains were excavated in 1993 just south of West Hill. A Saxon burial was recorded in the gardens on Barrington road and Anglo Saxon remains were excavated at Manor Farm just over Hoffers Brook in 1993.

There is no evidence as to when the village was established but it is likely to have been between 400 and 500AD on the basis that the stream which passed through the village until the 1950s would have been the only source of water and that it is an extension of Heydon or Bran ditch, the outermost of the Cambridgeshire Dykes initially dug around that time.

Within the village itself few excavations have been carried out and remains found were largely Iron Age or Medieval.

7.0 KEY CHARACTERISTICS

7.1 Scale: With the exception of the Church and press no buildings exceed 2.5 storeys in height. The area is predominantly domestic buildings of varying ages.

7.2 Walling Materials: Foxton has a mix of traditional through to modern buildings. Many of the older buildings are lime rendered over a wood frame. Internally they often retain original areas of wattle and daub. Some buildings incorporate original clunch in their construction. There are many brick buildings illustrating a range of types of brick contemporary with the age of the property through from Tudor to the present day.

7.3 Roof Forms & Materials: Consistent with the range of types and ages of mainly domestic buildings there are many roof forms ranging from traditional thatch through slate and tile including pan tile. Underlining the diversity there is one architecturally designed flat roof bungalow set in the former grounds of Foxton House.

7.4 Chimneys: several of the older properties have historically important chimneys, enhancing the streetscape.

7.5 Boundaries: Several of the older properties abut the street. Other properties are set well back from the road and in their own grounds such as The Bury and Foxton House. The majority have small front gardens ranging from open frontage through varying hedge types and heights to brick and in some cases flint walling. Of note are the few remaining clunch walls in the area of Foxton House.

7.6 Vistas: Views of the surrounding countryside from within the village are relatively limited. This underlines the importance of the protected frontage and open aspect of the dovecot meadow and the views to the chalk hills being retained.

8.7 Trees: There are significant groups and individual plantings throughout the village which enhance the street scene. We are seeking to extend protection to more of these trees within the new larger conservation area.

7.8 Spaces: Foxton is endowed with a number of small green areas, each adding to the character of its immediate location in a significant way. The Green is by far the most important: others are at vicarage corner (2), near the pump at the end of Mortimer’s Lane, near the Bury and outside the former press cottages in Station Road, and the area around the village sign. The dovecot meadow has been established as a unique green access space of significant diversity.

7.9 Village Signs: Several older style direction signs remain as do two old style signs with pre 1950’s triangular tops.

7.10 Village Pumps: two listed pumps survive, one on the green and one at the end of Mortimer’s Lane

7.11 War Memorials: The memorial on the corner of High Street and Station Road is well maintained as is the plaque in the porch of the former press building.

8 ENHANCEMENTS

8.1 We identified the following “enhancements” which we felt would improve the conservation area.

8.2 Burlington’s High Street entrance not in keeping with conservation area

8.3 Road signs in need of repainting, cleaning, mending.

8.4 The two historic signs should be adopted by village and maintenance work carried out to ensure their future survival.

8.5 Removal of fence and some vegetation to improve visibility for road users on Vicarage corner.

8.6 Replace name plates on press cottages (could be a village initiative)

8.7 Wooden gate to farm entrance next to Herod’s Cottage

8.8 Wooden gate to dovecot meadow

8.9 Consider reducing speed limit to 20mph through the expanded conservation area

9STREETSCAPE ANALYSIS

9.1 SHEPETH ROAD.

The west end of the village is entered from Shepreth Road, which is un-kerbed with hedgerows and tree lined verges, until it reaches the houses.

3 & 3A Shepreth Road:The first house of importance is No.3a [Bartholomews] SheprethRoad which was once part of No.3 Shepreth Road, formerly the farmhouse for West Hill Farm. The site was in occupation in 1492, rebuilt in about 1597 and again in 1880. A few fragments of the Tudor house remain, including the chimney stack. Also important is the row of cart sheds and stables that front the property, and the restored small barn to the side. This has been converted to a dwelling.

Foxton House:The driveway to Foxton House, is screened by trees. It is the only Regency style house in Foxton, and has an elegant interior. It was built by William Hurrell in 1825. In 1875 W. Asplin bought the estate and added several extensions to the house, but these have since been demolished. From 1890 Prof. A.P. Humphrey lived here and it was he who planted the many trees on the estate. Before the Village Hall was built in 1928, garden parties and other village functions were held there. The stables are still there but the walled garden was sold off for development. Sections of the clunch walls remain as the boundary of11A The Green and 17 High Street.

Also in SheprethRoad by the entrance to Foxton Houseis an old road junctions sign which is in keeping with the historic ambience of the area.

9.2 THE GREEN

Coming into the village from the west end, The Green is on the right. It is a small village green dating from the 12th century. It was the market place for a weekly market from about 1200 to 1540, until it died out through lack of trade. An annual fair was held here from 1324 until 1910. It was also the site of the village stocks from the 14th to the 19th century.